Allocating female students to the only female supervisors!!??

[Floofle]

Please help me articulate what's wrong with this...

I am a relatively new member of female teaching staff in a very male dominated area, and in an email about allocating supervisors to the new students, there were a number of guidelines.

Some were quite sensible things such as "please try to distribute students across supervisors", but it also said:
"Please try to allocate female students to Annie and Sarah" (names changed)

I am "sarah", and basically we are the only 2 female supervisors. Out of about 10 on the list...

This is awful right??? How do I say this? The person sending the email is quite senior to me but I am now acting Programme lead on the MSc as someone else is off on long term ill...

It’s an interesting question.
We know that girls are more likely to take subjects such as physics and fm in girls schools and (I think) are more likely to go on to uni to do engineering and physical sciences than their coed peers. I’m not sure whether the sex distribution of teachers is markedly different between girls schools and coed though, it’s the student peer groups that seem to make the difference.

There’s no real way to see if this effect translates into higher education in the U.K. - afaik the only instances are the 2 remaining Cambridge women’s colleges - Newnham female students and staff, Murray Edwards female undergrad but mixed sex teaching staff. Not a statistically significant sample.

In those colleges the students will attend lectures and supervisions in their department and across the university, so the staff in the college won’t particularly matter.

The statistical analysis our department did tracked sex-related attainment over ten years by modules, assessment style, school background, and so on. Most universities have attainment gaps between male and female students, but these are often understudied and complex (varying across subjects and universities and so on). As I mentioned above, in our stats it was quite clear that the attainment gaps between men and women students disappeared in modules which were lectured primarily by women, and were greatest in modules lectured primarily by men — this remained the same on compulsory modules where the whole cohort of students were taking them so there was no difference in the students taking the module.

Interestingly, the analysis also disproved, at least in our case, the canard that is always trotted out about women doing better on coursework. We found that the attainment gaps were actually biggest in coursework elements (and in any other form of “adjusted” assessment) — that is, coursework favoured men, not women at all. Women did best by far in examination modules mainly taught by women. Whoever was examining didn’t seem to matter, but the sex of the teaching staff did. It was quite a striking finding.

However, there were no real practical outcomes from this. Mainly because the obvious conclusion (hire and promote more women in the department) was not palatable to management, who have carried on hiring and promoting more men than women 🤷‍♀️

It’s very significant that when actual data on improving outcomes for women students and reducing attainment gaps pops up, but the conclusions suggest things universities don’t really like, nothing much happens. Plus ça change…

It’s basically perpetuating the boys club and making it harder for your female students to build relationships and progress in the future. I’m ex Big 4 and we encouraged mentorship across sexes/races. It encourages diversity of thought as well.

Totally understand where you’re coming from OP.

I don't see an issue.

My daughter is currently studying a male dominated subject. Having prominent female members on staff on the faculty was a positive thing for her. There is a big push for women in stem at the moment and having successful female role models for students is part of it.

Dd is also part of a male dominated student society and she is asked to attend events as a female to show other females that it can be for them.

Obviously having female role models is important…. But what sort of message are you sending to the male students if they aren’t tutored by women?

One of my academic roles, before I lived up to my name, was to allocate a large number of students to supervisors.

Over time, I realised that there tends to be an instinct to match students with types. It wasn't just about expertise. It was a humanities subject where young men tend to be in a minority, and I guess there may be an unthinking assumption that they might prefer a more 'masculine' supervisory style.

But if the male supervisors also tend to be more senior, the coordinator will be building in a bias.

It could work both ways of course: more senior supervisors might be better at getting more out of the student more efficiently if they're more experienced. Or they might be less responsive.

Whether boosting attainment or not, they were certainly different - less inclined to meet in the middle on marks with the second marker, for example.

mirabelle - The supos are within the colleges for the 2-3 years till they get to more specialist modules but otherwise, yes.
And that really is very intriguing data re female lecturers.

And I should have answered the question! Yes, it is awful. I found academia surprisingly resistant to ever questioning these unspoken assumptions, or confronting ourselves (the good guys) as part of the problem.

It did make me very suspicious about all those things we are told women (and minority / underprivileged students) do better in, like “coursework”. It seemed to me, after years of teaching students and supervising dissertations and theses, that women often believe that they will do better on coursework or other adjusted forms of assessment because that’s what they’ve been told all the way through the education system; but that it might actually not be true, and that encourages some students to demand certain forms of assessment under the mistaken belief that these even up social disadvantage or the “gender gap”, when they actually don’t.

Our student union is forever lobbying for all sorts of adjustments, open book exams, alternative forms of assessment and so on, which students enthusiastically ask for because they believe it will be better for them — and then they actually don’t like them when they get them, and complain endlessly about all the disadvantages!

We really need better research in this area. Like the nonsense stuff about “kinetic learning styles” that got adopted enthusiastically throughout all the school system a few years ago until it was shown to be absolute bollocks and to make no difference at all, there are loads of things everyone “just knows” must be true because they get told them from primary school onwards, like the “women do better in coursework” stuff. But I am sceptical about whether they are actually true; and whether these received ideas could actually be actively counterproductive.

I don't know if it would? Wouldn't it be helpful for minority black students to have a black mentor? And for women, in the minority on the course to have a female supervisor?

@Miriabelle what you're describing sounds like an attempt to address stereotype threat.

It's helpful to see people like yourself represented - and available as mentors, where people are willing, though academics in minority groups tend to get overloaded with such requests and expectations.

But that doesn't mean that a female supervisor or black supervisor with very different research interests to your own would be best for your project. It should depend primarily on the students' individual needs; also the professional/development needs of the relevant supervisor, and the team of supervisors more broadly.

@Scampuss Yes but it was quite a marked effect, and I’m a bit sceptical about stereotype threat, which didn’t replicate in lots of studies.

It would seem more likely to be a combination of several factors, not just how students see themselves, but how their supervisors see and interact with them, too, which isn’t the same thing as stereotype threat. It doesn’t seem implausible to me to think that students might feel better supported by supervisors who they perceive more positively; and that the supervisors themselves might actually form more supportive interactions with them. That is an effect that goes well beyond stereotype threat, even if it exists.

@Miriabelle I tried hard to explain to students that coursework can be gruelling, unfair in other ways, and that there's a lot to be said for an efficient exam.

There's a lot of magical thinking around assessment and I think female students had absorbed a message that coursework was fairer/girls are less good at exams.

They were generally unaware how much stronger they were than male students regardless of assessment type, which was a shame.

They should be allocated at random irrelevant of their sex

I was an engineering lecturer for over 30 years, in Chemical Engineering which has always had a higher proportion of female students than most engineering disciplines. We never allocated students to supervisors according to sex; it would not have worked because our system allowed students to choose project topics rather than supervisors. we did, however, allow students to ask either to not have a particular supervisor and for female students to request a female supervisor (although I can only think of one instance where this happened).

I agree that it’s important for female students to see female role models. I’m from an era where there were very, very few female engineers and it was hard to be an outlier all the time. I don’t think I ever had a lecture from a woman.

Years ago I had a collaborative project with psychology where we looked at some traits related to study. One of the findings was that the female engineers were less collaborative than the male engineers. I think this resulted in a lower perceived performance by female students in coursework. The boys were more likely to share their work while the girls were more likely to strongly believe that everyone should do their own work. So often once one male student had a breakthrough in a problem that propagated through their friends quicker than if a female student cracked it.

I’d be very concerned too. The male students need to see women being successful at their subject, and they’re not going to do that if women supervisors are reserved for the female students. The boys club has to be broken up and all students (and staff!) need to see that women as well as men can succeed.

And what if that just advantages the male students more?

Perhaps the male teaching staff are all weirdos and there's been an issue in the past with inappropriate relationships and this is part of their process of avoiding it.

I would have thought a better approach would be to suggest that no one is the only one of their gender in their supervision and make sure sure all staff are visable.

So we get slightly more male engineers who have been very well taught and recognise that women can be brilliant engineers too? I don’t have a problem with that.

I work in a heavily male-dominated industry (94% male) with ongoing training and competency exams every 6 months. I’m 27 years into this career and have had 1 female trainer in all that time. What I wouldn’t give to be allocated to a female trainer just occasionally! I’m fed up of being told ‘not bad - for a girl.’ I’ve struggled in exams through periods, pregnancy, return after maternity, and menopause, with trainers who frankly have no idea, because they have not experienced the female side of the career. I’m scored on communication skills, which I know from my life outside of work are good, but my style is not ‘male’ enough for some examiners, and I’m told I need to be ‘more like the guys.’

If have not taken promotion because the male-female divide in the industry is so pronounced. The one thing that would change my mind on whether to apply would be if I could find myself with a female trainer or examiner. I don’t think it’s a bad thing at all to allocate the female students to female mentors in a male dominated setting. Often the female voices are drowned out, and it can help to know that you are not incompetent, you are just being blown back by the force of all that male hot air.

But in the meantime the women continue to do less well? How is that better?

In my post above, when I say that the attainment gap disappeared, I mean that men and women were doing equally well. In modules dominated by male lecturers men did better than women.

Obviously that was just our department and I wouldn’t want to generalise across all other subjects. But if similar effects were at work here, then the worst that happens to men in any event is doing equally well as women, whether they have a male or female lecturer. Whereas for women the effect is either doing equally well as men, or doing worse. If the women are doing worse, how does it matter to them how the men see women lecturers?

Making it a default thing may only reinforce segregation and bias so I think you're right to question it. I would ask about it and whether all the students have been asked about it - including the male ones.

Separation by sex doesn’t sound right at all.

what is the department includes Prof BigWig (male) who is v influential in the field and writes great references for all his students. But now female students never get a chance to chat with Prof Bigwig or get a reference from him.

if the tutor has a pastoral role, maybe there could be an option for female students to request a female tutor. But should a gay male student be able to request a gay tutor?